Understanding the glacial history of the western Arctic

To interpret what we see today both on land and at the seabed, we need to understand how the landscape was different in the past. When we say “past,” we mean on a geologic timeframe—specifically, about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, when the climate was much colder and glaciers covered much of Canada. There have been several other geological periods in the last million years when glaciers covered the landscape; indeed Antarctica and Greenland and parts of Baffin Island are still covered, but we are most interested in this “recent” one. In particular, we are hoping to collect some of the first data on the western side of the Mackenzie Trough to understand the imprint that glaciation has had on the Yukon Shelf. Scientists have had to speculate on the extent and timing of glaciations because they’ve never been out there with equipment to collect data.